Apple: Porno Apps For the iPhone Will Not Be Approved
9:54 am, June 26th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Apple has pulled Hottest Girls, the first iPhone porn app. Inappropriate apps containing pornography will not be approved in the future, Apple says.
Apple has spoken on the issue of porno iPhone apps, and it’s, ‘No way Jose.’
An Apple spokesman says the company will not approve iPhone apps with “inappropriate” content, especially pornography, despite the iPhone 3.0 age restriction system.
The question of porno apps arose after Hottest Girls appeared on the iPhone app store — the first app to feature saucy photos of naked women. Promising “2200+ sexy bikini babes and lingerie models,” the app is decidedly softcore. (The app disappeared for a few hours on Thursday, apparently because Apple had pulled it, but the developer had removed Hottest Girls voluntarily because of the strain on the image servers.)
Thanks to age restrictions in the new iPhone 3.0 OS software, mature apps can be blocked from download from the App Store. Many observers expected the App Store to be flooded with pornographic apps, especially because mobile porn is turning into big business. Juniper Research estimates the mobile porn market to be worth $3.5 billion by 2010. Growth will come from streaming video and video chat. The biggest market will not be the U.S., but Western Europe, Juniper said.
But now Apple says categorically it will not approve porno apps now or in the future. In a statement received by Cult of Mac, spokesman Tom Neumayr said:
“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Hardware, Humor, News, Rumors, Software, iPhone, iPod | Comment on this article
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applestories's status on Friday, 26-Jun-09 16:55:12 UTC - Identi.ca, on June 26th, 2009 at 9:55 am
So will they be removing Safari then? Porn is added to that app all the time!
JB, on June 26th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I think Apple should Keep porn of the app store, a lot of kids use the app store. If you want porn on your iphone there are lots of free ways to get them on to your iphone youself.
Poppa_P, on June 26th, 2009 at 10:32 am
sounds like censorship. Apple has no right to decide what apps you run or what content you have on whatever device, including iphones. If they think they can, they should also remove Safari..
whynot?, on June 26th, 2009 at 10:42 am
whynot?:
They actually have every right to decide what apps you can and cannot have on your phone. Those are the terms, which you agreed to, when you bought the phone. And they AREN’T determining what CONTENT you can or can’t have on your phone. They’re saying they won’t sell products that provide it through THEIR store. There are plenty of ways for you to put whatever you want on your phone. it’s just that this one avenue is closed.
The harm the company would do to itself in basically becoming a porn merchant (since they’re taking 30% of a paid app) is not worth the increase in revenue.
eric, on June 26th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Not that I would ever buy this app, but it’s kind of racist to have “Asian” in there but not the other “races” (Asian isn’t a race, I know). Also, where is the “redhead” button?
Gazoobee, on June 26th, 2009 at 11:33 am
off topic. NY Yankees game broadcast talks about mac. around the 50 sec. timeline and so on.
http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=5249631
Pedro, on June 26th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I actually like the anti-porn stance of Apple. Not that I’m the least bit anti-porn, but it’s kind of reassuring that Apple is protecting its image. There’s no way they want the iPhone identified as a “porn tool.” You can still get all the porn you like through Safari, but that’s a function of the Internet, not the phone. Also, anybody who needs to use their phone to view porn has got some serious issues. They don’t want to be the enabler.
Who’d want to be seen making a call on their Nokia “SMUT-003″ phone? Apple certainly doesn’t want that kind of easy identification of their product either.
Now can we talk about the “redhead” button?
imajoebob, on June 26th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Eric,
I can’t imagine Apple has the right. This can’t be legal.
What about the case against Microsoft about people allowing to choose (a browser) ?
whynot?, on June 26th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
whynot?-
Apple has the right to not sell whatever they want to not sell (or something like that). They also have the right to control the software THEY OWN and license to the user. I don’t like or agree with the User License model, but it’s law. Apple isn’t installing, selling, or promoting a competing product, and they’re not using their market strength to run competition out of business, so there’s not the same ant-trust issues. They also have every right to not sell competing products from the iTunes store.
If you want to use an internet tool on Safari to surf porn, Apple can’t stop you. But if you want to use the iPhone’s OS to run an app, Apple can tell you to pound sand. So to speak…
imajoebob, on June 26th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Way to go Apple! The last thing we need is one more way for society to demoralize us. Thank God someone is taking a stand…even if they can’t remove porn from the Internet, at least they don’t condone it with an app.
FightTheFlow, on June 27th, 2009 at 3:39 am
censorship.
noone has right to controle privacy and morality of people. Thanks God, someone will give freedom to people.
oomu, on June 27th, 2009 at 10:39 am
[...] Hottest Girls war die erste Softporno-Anwendung im iTunes App-Store. Nachdem Apple mit dem iPhone OS 3.0 Altersbeschränkungen einführte, schien es nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis Pornographie Einzug in den App-Store hält. Doch Apple machte dem einen Strich durch die Rechnung: Hottest Girls musste wieder aus dem App-Store entfernt werden. Apple möchte keine Pornographie im App-Store, und das Programm verstoße gegen diese Auflage. (via cultofmac) [...]
Steve Jobs kehrt zurück, iPhone 3GS kann Video und iTouch User upgraden nicht | macophilia - Mac, iPod, iPhone und alles andere von Apple, on June 28th, 2009 at 4:18 am
[...] Apple: Porno Apps For the iPhone Will Not Be Approved (cultofmac.com) Share and Enjoy: [...]
Nude iPhone app taken down | Free iPhone, on June 28th, 2009 at 8:08 am
This is an interesting situation for Apple, and I think they played it perfectly. They’re not policing the content you can view (online, for instance), but they are policing the content they implicitly condone by hosting it in their app store. Even if sometimes they let things like this fall through the cracks, they’re very firm about what they do and don’t allow, which I’d say is for the best of us iPhone users, as I personally don’t want to open the app store only to be flooded with iPorn apps.
Nevertheless, the arguments are still raging and even making the news sometimes (at http://www.newsy.com/videos/iporn, for instance).
Daniel, on June 29th, 2009 at 10:35 am
[...] has taken steps to enforce Jobs’s pledge. In late June, Apple shuttered the Hottest Girls app which featured 2,000+ pictures of naked girls. A week later, the company nuked another app, [...]
Peek-a-Boo: There’s Plenty of Racy iPhone Apps on iTunes | Datensklaven, on July 11th, 2009 at 1:01 am